The new wave of corporate investments in land seems intent on expanding and intensifying a short-sighted farming model that, to date, has marginalized women‘s voices and interests. As with sisal, tobacco, and tea in the past, today‘s private investors in soya, jatropha and eucalyptus crops continue to dismiss small-scale food production by women as unimportant and irrelevant. They could not be more wrong.

Earlier this month we issued an action alert to stop the stoning of Intisar Sharif Abdallah* in Sudan. We are pleased to share the news from our Sudanese sisters who report that as of 21 June 2012, Intisar was released unconditionally and without further charges. Please see SIHA's press release below.

We congratulate and celebrate the work and actions by Sudanese women’s rights activists and their supporters around the world. We also thank everyone in our networks who took part in this global action.

We, members of the Senegalese Feminist Forum, would like to express our full support for the Malian people and especially to the women who are woefully underrepresented in these critical moments of the country's political life.

The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network and the Violence is not our Culture (VNC) Campaign condemn the recent police raid on a workshop for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights defenders in Entebbe, Uganda. This act is an outright violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of human rights defenders, which are guaranteed under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter, both of which the Uganda government has signed and ratified.